Bad Choices tonight ...

Submitted by CSNA on Mon, 07/17/2023 - 14:10

 
Tonight, the Rules Committee of the Evanston City Council will discuss a memo from Deputy City Attorney Alexandra Ruggie recommending changes to the process of reviewing major variances and development projects.  Today that process includes the Land Use Commission (LUC) recommendation to the  Planning and Development Committee and the full City Council. The background is that on June 5, 2023, the Rules Committee discussed ways to ensure a hard start time for the City Council meetings.

We are asking our members to contact their council members to ask them to reject, at minimum, until there has been significantly more public discussion, all of the options except the status quo.

 

Read more ...

 

One option (2) under discussion would place all zoning decisions exclusively under the charter of the Land Use Commission. Appeals by anyone dissatisfied with a decision would be only to the Illinois courts. The City Council would not have a vote. This change would effectively take all zoning decisions out of the hands of elected officials — and inevitably produce more lawsuits, costly for both residents and the city.

Also, one of the premises for making this change appears inaccurate.

The memo from Ms. Ruggie claims the current process is not in accordance with the city code. Ms. Ruggie states  that:

"Under the City Code, there is no direction to send these items to the Planning Development Committee.”

The code sections referenced in the memo do not specify the Planning and Development Committee. 

But this may be an oversight in the update of the code language, or a detail left out because the Planning and Development Committee is part of the City Council.  In any case, the sections of the Code describing the purpose of the Land Use Commission 2-19-1 clearly include the Planning and Development Committee in the process. 

From the code ...

"The City Council establishes a Land Use Commission to provide for planning the future development and redevelopment of the Municipality as authorized by Division 12 of the Illinois Municipal Code, 65 ILCS 5/11-12-4 et seq, hear and decide major variations from provisions of the Zoning Ordinance, hear and decide appeals, hear and make recommendations to the Planning and Development Committee and City Council on applications for certain major variations, all special use permits including planned developments, and applications for map amendments and text amendments to the Zoning Ordinance."
 
Additional references to the process whereby the LUC recommends to the Planning and Development Committee are in Section 2-19-4:
 
“F)  Hear and make recommendations to the Planning and Development Committee and the City Council regarding any application for a map amendment or text amendment to the Zoning Ordinance.

(G)  Hear and make recommendations to the Planning and Development Committee and the City Council regarding any application for a major variation pertaining to off-street parking and loading for all uses other than single-family and two-family residential and height beyond fifty (50) feet pursuant to Section 6-3-8.

(H)  Hear and make recommendations to the Planning and Development Committee and the City Council regarding any application for a special use, including planned developments.”

All the above is also in accordance with the enacting ordinance 92-O-21 which establishes the Land Use Commission and states that recommendations will be made to the Planning and Development Committee.

The Land Use Commission, an appointed body, first recommends a course of action to the Planning and Development Committee.. The LUC recommendation is voted on by the Planning and Development Committee and then by the full City Council. At one time the Zoning Board of Appeals (appointed) and the Plan Commission (appointed) were involved in zoning matters. That changed January 1, 2022, when both bodies were dissolved, and those functions were placed under the Land Use Commission. Apparently this process was outlined in the ordinance 92-O-21 … did make it into the City Code section  2-19-1 but not explicitly into City Code Sections 6-3-5-8, 6-3-6-8, 6-3-7-8 and 6-3-8-10(D) for Special Use Permit Applications, Planned Development Applications, Unique Uses and Major Variation respectively.

The memorandum (pages 35-36) prepared by the Deputy City Attorney offers three options affecting that process:

  1. The Planning and Development Committee review is eliminated, and the issue goes to the full council.
  2. The LUC becomes the determining body. The City Council does not vote on Land Use Issues. Appeals go directly to the courts.
  3. The current process is retained. The Planning and Development Committee and then the full council review issues to be decided by the Council.  The code is updated to be more specific in the approval process subsections.


The Rules Committee is comprised of all nine council members and Mayor Daniel Biss. Council Member Tom Suffredin is the current chair of the Rules Committee.

The Planning and Development Committee is composed of seven council members and includes both 6th Ward Council Member Tom Suffredin and 7th Ward Council Member Eleanor Revelle.
 
6th Ward Tom Suffredin: tsuffredin@cityofevanston.org  847-859-7810
7th Ward Eleanor Revelle: erevelle@cityofevanston.org  312-459-0644
Mayor Daniel Biss: dbiss@cityofevanston.org